"Yeah, I spent some time in the Ukraine."
"You can't say the! It implies imperialism! But Ukraine is a real country not just "the borderland!""
"But that's how we say it!"
"Doesn't matter! Shame on you! Follow the current thing!"
In English "the" often indicates a region: The Rockies, the Balkans, the Mississippi, but we say the Congo for the country and don't say the Livonia for the region. Our ancestors said "the Yemen", the "Sudan", "the Lebanon".
In Russian and Ukrainian there are no articles. Instead it works like this:
na = on
v = in
Note that In English, we have in, on and at. Some words use both e.g. sitting na lake but swimming v lake.
There are many specifics and exceptions:
-
na: post office, factory, beach, dacha, city square, stadium, kitchen, East, North, activities (work, lessons)..
-
v: used with countries (because they contain you)
But we're talking about places, Ukraine:
-
na used for geographic things you are on (islands, mountains) and regions (Caucasus, Carpathians, Kuban)
-
v with some regions like Siberia, Polesia or the Carpathian region (uses both)
-
v with places ending in -landia (Iceland, Ireland, Curland, Ingermanland, Scottland, Livonia (Lifland) although they're islands
-
Sicily and Sardinia use v 1/3 as often as na (from google search hits), Corsica gets 5% (most islands never use v). Other trivia like na Malta country/island, but v Malta a village in Irkutsk...
Ukrainian culture warriors say v Ukraine while Russian warriors says na Ukraine. Others fill the middle ground, squeezed between both, while older literature and old ladies do the darnedest things.
But it goes deeper. Other Slavic languages have the same issue. In Poland, they shifted to w Ukraine in the 90s. But if I ask google translate: na Ukrainie. Asking friends:
if someone says w ukrainie, It's a mistake. it's hard to change because we have many cultural stuff that include "na ukrainie". In the song Hej Sokoly we find the line "Na zielonej ukrainie".
Indeed, the Polish national epic starts: "O Lithuania" here referring to the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. It's title features: na Litwie. With na! (In the verses, w is also used.) Now, Lithuania has many Poles. Anna Pieszko shows how Poles and Lithuanians fight this war:
Poles in Lithuania incorrectly use na with Lithuania, because it implies it's part of Poland like na Kresy. [I highly recommend Kate Brown's A Biography of No Place about the Kresy, to learn a lot about the USSR and nationalism,]
The Lithuanian Algimantas Zolubas believes if "a Pole considers himself a Polish in Lithuania, not a Lithuanian Pole, he's a guest" [not a citizen. An anti-Polish cultural organization Vilnija of course believes usage of na "threatens the integrity of the Republic" in "non-compliance with the constitution."
But Poles also say na Slovakia, na Latvia, na Belarus, na Hungary (Poland's honored brother). Does this imply that Polish na doesn't carry a regional distinction? Either way, the Polish position is continuity with tradition. The New Dictionary of Correct Polish says:
the use of the preposition "na" with the names of certain geographical regions and countries is motivated by a centuries-old tradition, which there is no reason to change, and does not mean treating them as politically dependent territories, and especially dependent on Poland.
Impressive cultural steadfastness. In English we no longer use the article and many Russians have moved to v Ukraine. While we say Germany instead of Deutschland and Türkiye probably won't gain much circulation, Myanmar is gaining on Burma and we have stopped saying Bombay, Ceylon, Siam, Persia (for the modern country), Kiev. (N.b. Peking and Bejing transcribe the same word, just with different systems) And often people don't care: What Italian complains about our Florence, Venice etc.?
In Serbo-Croatian (also outside of Serbia): na Kosovu, but all other culturally relevant regions I could find are u (like the Banat, Vojdovina, Srem, Raška...) except na Balkanu. Friends could not think of more.
The historian Timothy Snyder says names are part of an overreaching colonial process. But how much can it matter? What's in a name? Do Slavs think worse of the Germans who they call mute (Nemcy, Lenard Nemoy's last name means mute)? Do we think worse of the Slavs whose name gives us slave?
Above I wrote "continuity of tradition." What does that really mean across the vagaries of the years of centuries? The Hebrews called Southern Ukraine "Ashkenaz" but as Jews came into Europe (from the Mediterranean Northwards) Northern France and Western Germany came to be the Ashkenaz, Iberia Sepharad and the Slavic lands Canaan. Eventually those Ashkenazi Jews were pushed Eastwards, merging with those in Canaan - the new new Ashkenaz. It stayed this way as borders ebbed and flowed, nations rose, fell and rose again (Poland and Lithuania).
In 1919, the Karaite Adolph Joffe, a Soviet Bolshevist, running negotiations after the Polish-Soviet war with the Baltic countries, found himself negotiating with Max Soloveitchik in Yiddish. Max, the Lithuanian diplomat, asked for what they Jews called "Lita", that is: the whole of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
veqq
1yr ago
He has had a tv show for ~ 10 years, which he's surely more famous for than being arrested when his front door jammed.
Also many reasonable positions which support trusting him:
The enemy of individuality is groupthink, Gates says, and here he holds everyone accountable. Recently, he has enraged many of his colleagues in the African-American studies field—especially those campaigning for government reparations for slavery—by insistently reminding them, as he did in a New York Times op-ed last year, that the folks who captured and sold blacks into slavery in the first place were also Africans, working for profit. "People wanted to kill me, man," Gates says of the reaction to that op-ed. "Black people were so angry at me. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good black people. The world just isn't like that."
veqq
1yr ago
Ukrainian identity is being based on 19th/early 20th century style blood and soil rhetoric
No. Though some splinters remain (some very obvious nazi groups), the model the diaspora coalesced on by the 50s, which became state policy 8 years ago, is a multi-ethnic national state. Rudnytsky, Hrushevsky, Lypynsky etc. are taught in school... Dontsov and his ilk have no cachet today. But yeah, sure, obsess about a few hundred (surviving) neonazis in Azov.
N.b. Kiev already had quite a lot of Afghan and Iraqi refugees. Already by 2017, most drivers couldn't speak Russian, Ukrainian or English.
veqq
1yr ago
are convinced that western mainstream media is still defending Israel.
People don't always update their priors when the world changes. Look at Noam Chomsky.
veqq
1yr ago
Last I heard all our tariff's on Russian oil have just allowed middle men to buy it at a higher price from Russia, enriching Russia, jack up the price even more enriching themselves, and selling it to Europe and America impoverishing us.
There are no tariffs on Russia oil. Europeans want to start with a price cap. The US restricted import of Russia oil, which was only a 2-3 % and not for domestic consumption (the US is a net exporter), but for refining (refining is a huge value added industry) and then reexport. You do realize that the US is the world's largest oil producer and the energy industry is making a killing right now? Europe is suffering, yes. Not from tariffs, as they don't exist, but because they just stopped accepting Russian oil and allowed Saudis and Indians to buy and reexport it to Europe. That's not the US government's doing and doesn't affect the US...
because apparently we believed we never needed to make stinger missiles ever again?
The US hadn't bought a stinger in 18 years. The components aren't produced anymore. Raytheon started preparing for production last year due to an international order.
veqq
1yr ago
Relatedly, the internal boarders of the commonwealth between Poland and Lithuania from the Union of Lublin in 1579 are the current border between Belarus and Ukraine.
Ukraine has a deep ethnic split between Ukrainians and Russians
This dichotomy lost its importance by 2016. Having lived in Eastern Ukraine, everyone lost any faith in Russia seeing the Donbas turn into a looted mafia run hellhole, with militias forcing people to sign their assets away etc. Culture, language etc. are meaningless compared to not wanting to be impoverished worse than the 90s. The Ukrainian army is very happy to use Russian, Azov's main language was Russian and had many Russians from Russia in its ranks. Many are now switching languages, building negative associations with Russian, due to the war.
One confounder is Zelensky himself, commonly found on Russian TV, who ran on a campaign to ease tensions and move on from the Donbas conflict. In spite of this, he surprising ended up not vetoing (middling) anti-Russian language laws. I haven't been able to determine why he switched then - but it does echo popular opinion in the East too. Here Zelensky sings on a Russian New Year's special: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lkdDQX06ISI The channel currently does nothing but war propaganda, featuring some audience members.
I've written about identity in Ukraine in other posts: https://www.themotte.org/post/269/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/50553?context=8#context
veqq
1yr ago
the history of the reparations movement
Gates, the guy speaking:
The enemy of individuality is groupthink, Gates says, and here he holds everyone accountable. Recently, he has enraged many of his colleagues in the African-American studies field—especially those campaigning for government reparations for slavery—by insistently reminding them, as he did in a New York Times op-ed last year, that the folks who captured and sold blacks into slavery in the first place were also Africans, working for profit. "People wanted to kill me, man," Gates says of the reaction to that op-ed. "Black people were so angry at me. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good black people. The world just isn't like that."
It's rather even handed. He doesn't support the reparation movement!
There's this incredible segment by Tucker Carlson that basically lays out a theory Nixon was not as big a crook as we think, and that he was set up because he tried to keep the government subordinate to its notional head.
This is honestly fascinating. It demands further research.
I see that a certain Geoff Shepard's written a few relevant books.
The best short thing I found: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/06/20/watergate_at_50_revelations_from_newly_declassified_evidence_147766.html
Here's the tape recording of Nixon saying he knows who shot Kennedy: https://rogerstone.substack.com/p/nixon-threatened-to-reveal-the-cias
But so much of it seems like pure paranoia e.g. here Nixon claims everyone was out to get just him: https://nypost.com/2022/06/16/watergate-gave-rise-to-the-culture-war/ besides how aggressively partisan they are, not digging into the actual topic, but primarily using it as a quick thing to besmirch various actors, to influence current perception. Stuff like:
Sound familiar? Those same dark forces will continue to wage ruthless war on anyone else who challenges their unaccountable power and corrupt status quo.
really weakens a piece and narrative.
Primarily Russians, Poles, Jews, Tatars, Greeks, Romanians, Hungarians etc.
Historically, the key event which formed Ukraine was the Polish Lithuanian commonwealth forming in 1569 (from a centuries long personal union). Poland and Lithuania continued to have different legal codes etc. but this shifted the border of Poland East, making the modern day Lithuanian-Ukrainian border to the North and the Russian-Ukrainian border to the North East. (Eventually, Ukrainians and Belarusians would have different national geneses due to different cultural contexts after this point, namely the Lithuanians not being exposed to the following.) Note, Lithuania was primarily an Eastern Slav state, using a legal code written in Church Slavonic etc. but the upperclasses started Polonizing in the 1500s.
Now become Poland, the South East of the commonwealth was flooded by rich Poles (only Lithuanians could own land in Lithuania) and Jews. They brought Polish methods of farming over, namely serfdom (a different form existed further East) to sell grain westwards. Many Eastern Slavs followed suit, adopting Renaissance learning, Catholicism and the Polish language. Many others were able to stay free, but didn't enjoy rights. Poland was rather democratic at the time, with the nobility (making up 10-20% of the population) participating in representative democracy. Outside of the nobility, even the "registered cossacks" couldn't make full use of the courts etc. To the South were the Ottomans (the Crimean Khanate (a mongol successor state) shifted in and out of their sphere) who often launched slave raids on the coasts and southern steppe. In a war in 1648, discontent at getting enserfed, at not being able to use the courts etc. boiled over and the cossacks rebelled. Somewhat losing, they then signed a treaty with Russia, which didn't go well. A lot of interesting stuff happened (Polish nobility converted to Protestantism, then back to Catholicism, part of the Orthodox church went into communion with the Catholic church, Ukrainian churchmen brought scholarship to Moscow, Lazar Baranovych came up with the 3rd Rome story etc.) Then Russians came under Catharine, who settled the steppes and coasts, which were primarily empty (fear from slave raids) or inhabited by Turks (Tatars) so Russians came. Greeks had been living on the coasts the whole time under the Turks at this point (Athens got its wheat from Southern Ukraine).
In the 19th century, looking at all of this, inspired by the German national awakening which threw off Napoleon, the Hungarians, the Croats/Serbs etc. etc. further West in Europe, many theoreticians of Ukrainianhism appear. They worked to fight Polish landlords (for reasons). Whereas other nationalists came up with historic narratives, made notes of the nobility's roots etc. to justify their people, the Ukrainians didn't have these things. Others had ruled them for many centuries etc. But there were a lot of them, speaking the same language(ish). Wasn't that enough?
Well, to answer your question, finally: Hrushevsky tried the traditional method, writing massive tomes of past history describing the existence of the Ukrainians or their lands from time immemorial (until the 1660s). He tried to provide a legitimizing context, showing the people's engagement in politics, what they were doing etc. If Hungary had a king ruling by divine right, the crown's actions described the nation. But if Ukraine doesn't, you have to describe the people's actions, customs, social history etc.
Now that's all fun and good, but how is a state supposed to form? How are the peasants supposed to conduct trade, pay taxes etc. when the cities are primarily filled with others? Should Ukraine be the countryside while the cities are not Ukraine? Lypynsky answers: Hell, even our fairy tales have Tatars, we've had these others here for ages! They belong here. Indeed, he wanted the Polish and Russian nobility to stay and guard the Ukrainian people, he was a monarchist... If Polish nobility existed in Russia under the Tsar and Austrian Kaiser, why couldn't they under a Ukrainian Hetman? Hrushevsky adopts this. Of course, his past work included many "non-Ukrainians" and besides, what is a Ukrainian? An Orthodox Eastern Slav? How's that different from the historical Lithuanians or the Russians or? It's different because we have this land touched by so many foreigners. The Russians in the East lived centuries under the mongols, they had serfdom for much longer, they didn't have nobles with rights or property, but we got Western serfdom, we had scholars of Greek, thousand year old cathedrals, elections etc.! And from those in the North, they didn't suffer under the Polish landlords.
(A lot happens. Austria-Hungary fell (where Ukrainians throve and fought Poles), independent Poland gained control over millions, removing their rights (universal male suffrage in Austria-Hungary's lost), famines, wars, mass murder, communism, fascism (everyone but the Czechs were Authoritarian to fascist in the 1930s...) The same bad things happened in most of Eastern Europe, with huge ethnic cleansings, expulsions etc. resulting in today's rather unmixed states. Anyway...)
Rudnytsky continues this further. He studies in Poland, a multiethnic state desiring a Central European union of sorts (as a bulwark against Germany and Russian imperialism, some of the minorities called this Polish imperialism), then Nazi Germany (weird, eh? Still trying to understand these points visawise), but leaves to Prague (still during the war) fearing being caught as a Jew. He eventually finds himself in the US. There, he writes many articles for a dissident Polish publication in Paris: Kultura. These Poles get read a lot by Polish dissidents - and have specific policy pieces. One of which is accepting Vilnius and Lviv as Lithuania and Ukraine (and not Poland, saying no to territorial disputes). When socialism falls, their policy suggestions are implemented immediately in Poland. As are Rudnytsky's in Ukraine. Writing to the Ukrainians diaspora, he said Ukraine shall be a virile push into the future, not dwelling in the past. Instead of Lypynsky's loyalty to the Tsar, loyalty to the Ukrainian people! And everyone who's loyal to them is Ukrainian! (Who's American? The Americans! That guy waving the flag with a slight foreign accent who came last month, what about that guy [insert politics you don't like]? Still American, technically. Embracing it makes you one, being there also does etc.
(For whatever reason, many Ukrainians ended up in the Canadian plains. They were sort of an incubation chamber for Ukrainianism, in communion with ideas from Austria-Hungary and then the 20s USSR, but not being exposed to famine, war and genocide. Many were also in the North Eastern US. They would sort of move into Ukraine in the 90s, but their influence was spotty in a way I don't fully understand. In constant contact with other diasporas, they largely maintain a bit of Polish, Russian and Ukrainian, so you don't get too many ethnopurists.)
Now, Rudnytsky's family language was Polish, their mother's family language was Yiddish, Dontsov's brother was a Russian bolshevik. Lypynsky was a Pole. (Hrushevsky seems fully Ukrainian.) They all just embraced and made Ukrainianism. This was common in Hungarian, German, Czech, Finnish and Russian nationalisms too, where e.g. a Swedish speaking Ethnic Swede would compile the great epic of Finnish literature or German factory owners (like emigrated from Germany) would research the origins of Hungarian and make their kids Hungarian politicians. (Hungary's great project was to turn everyone they could into a Hungarian through forced schooling, much like Argentina in the late 19th century did with the Italian etc. immigrants.)
Contrary to this, in the interwar Poland great resentment appeared, where in some provinces in the 20s regular assassinations of government officials took place. (This stopped in the 30s after people saw what was going on in the USSR, so less rights in Poland than in the past under the Austrians was still better than... Yeah.) In this milieu you get guys like Dontsov. He quit socialism before it won out in Russia, and thought Hitler was the bomb. Obviously independent Ukraine failed after WWI because of the minorities. When the Nazis appeared, many of this ilk in Poland joined in the killing of Jews, and Poles. Similar happened in Lithuania. Much was less than ideological and just police continuing to police under the new leadership, just with different commands. (These guys also disliked the Czechs and wanted to incorporate Rusyns, who are sort of Eastern Slavs further West than Ukraine.)
So, did they just cleanly disappear, these guys who genocided 200,000 Poles for the Nazis? Oh no, their plans succeeded. They won. The USSR pushed Ukraine West, expelling a few million Poles, beyond their greatest dreams. (Ukrainians still in Poland were either sent to Ukraine, or sent to resettle the lands taken from Germany in 1945. Socialist Poland was fixated on the Polish ethnicity, declaring the country purely Polish in the 70s. Thus the Kultura Poles, opposing socialism, also opposing such mononationalisms. Socialist Romania and Bulgaria were also extremely nationalist, deporting a few million Germans, Bulgarians etc.) Some survived the war, floated around the diasporas etc. but all the far right parties in Ukraine get less than 1% of the vote now.
This is the Ukrainian narrative, generated from talking to Ukrainian friends, living there, reading 6 books, seeing some lectures. My personal thoughts are a bit different, mostly boiling down to: All Slavs (at least Eastern Slavs) should speak one language, all Romance speakers should also etc. (more cultural connections for better literature, maybe), but many states. 1000 Slavic states! (Many courts to patronize poets...) Nationalism distracts from poetry.
veqq
1yr ago
I grew up in LA, spending nearly 20 years there. I only learned there was a metro/subway/non-freight train 7 years after leaving.
veqq
1yr ago
That bill (Restrict) doesn't even have the support of the ones who proposed it. Then you have the Data act.
But there are multiple anti-tiktok bills and the one with actual support would ban it under the purview of existing laws.
In the US "White" includes most Hispanics (besides Arabs). Every branch of my family's been in California since the 1920s, when they came from New Mexico. They spoke English and Spanish for 4 generations before the move, and more since. If you look at the employee roaster for Hughes Aircraft Company's engineers in 1959, half the names are Alvarez, Vasquez etc. The same for a high school marching band in 1942...
While the 80s and 90s saw a massive influx of Mexicans, the "Whites" in the bullet belt aren't who you're thinking of. I have a few generations of family in aerospace and their work photos aren't super white. By the late 70s, you get the children and wives of executed Vietnamese judges, many doctors, electrical engineers etc. coming. Within a few years, they appear on department pictures and cards.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Porcentage_de_hispanos_por_condado_de_Estados_Unidos%2C_1960.jpg Note that LA county is the unclear 25%+.
veqq
1yr ago
Could you explain the distinction between Tutsi and Hutu?
Previously I vaguely remembered colonial authorities basically made them up. So I looked into it a bit. Wiki e.g.:
They defined "Tutsi" as anyone owning more than ten cows (a sign of wealth) or with the physical features of a longer thin nose, high cheekbones, and being over six feet tall, all of which are common descriptions associated with the Tutsi.
which would add any successful people into this, as if making "kulak" an ethnicity.
Both the Tutsi and Hutu had been the traditional governing elite, but both colonial powers allowed only the Tutsi to be educated and to participate in the colonial government.
🤷♀️
Is it the case where a few disparate groups were sublimated into either Tutsi or Hutu? Or that the Tutsi were a coherent group? Are "official" takes as distorted as e.g. HBD? I'm more familiar with Central Asia, where Kazakhs, Uzbeks and such were basically invented in the 1920s, almost whole cloth.
veqq
1yr ago
After the fall, Poland enacted far-ranging, unpopular economic reforms--the Balcerowicz Plan--the essentially transformed the economy from a state-run one into a "free government w/ some government intervention" type. Similar reforms were attempted in Ukraine, but leadership balked in face of how unpopular these measures were. As a result, Poland economy was able to grow at a higher rate than Ukraine's, so the two became less alike as time went on.
During Solidarity, emigré publications like Kultura were read through and discussed in Poland, with the anti-communists reaching a clear consensus of what to do. Upon coming to power, they had coherent policy already drafted and prepared. Elsewhere, only after the Warsaw pact or USSR fell were they able to start discussing policy etc. but were then under pressure of momentary politics, corruption, people fiefdoms etc. This is how Poland was able to immediately sign treaties with Ukraine and Lithuania, abandoning revanchist territorial desires - they had already long since decided on this.
veqq
1yr ago
Musk has already signaled cooperation with the Regime.
Or the key fact that SpaceX has been involved with the government since founding, got hundreds of millions in contracts without having launched a rocket yet, with missile defense friends determining where the money goes etc. Musk is the cathdral, Musk is a big player in the military industrial complex.
Balenciaga is a huge luxury brand. Most better airports have some shops, the flagships in major cities have big lines waiting to go inside. Although around for a century, their primary innovation you're sure to have seen imitations of was sneakers with overly wide bottoms: https://balenciaga.dam.kering.com/m/30e12220cb4b44c9/Medium-544351W2GA19100_F.jpg?v=3
Over the past decade, short atmospheric art films have been huge in the luxury industry. They did one with the Simpsons: https://youtube.com/watch?v=PZHESOq-Gkw
3 parts:
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A difficult quality to articulate, like: At least one passion/interest which she develops/works on/improves (can be chemistry "i love cute chemicals", dog training, old philology, horses...) / having agency / a serious about life, making active long term decisions (this leads to many things, like a good role model for kids, understanding cause and effect, to give kids a good mindset, so she isn't boring herself, so I don't feel guilty concentrating on something for hours because she has things to do too...)
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in context of the above, the desire to also build a family, execute on some sort of plan etc. ...forever! So linking my own agency with another, whereas most seem to either not have any agency/selfstarterness or
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also boobs, because I'm shallow
From 20-24 I wasn't mature enough to take basic steps and missed out on a few jewels, who then got married etc. shortly there after. Then I ran into some trainwrecks who failed on the 2nd point / misrepresented their goals or own position (went so far as to stay with a girl's family for a month, planned many things out... then she ghosted me for her wedding with the neighbor guy, her parents wanted her to marry since they were 12, who she quickly divorced...) But I've definitely met hundreds of perfect people, and some dozens who were actually in a position to be in a relationship etc. I just dropped the ball a lot. To some extent, at 30 I'm now scared that "everyone" is now TikTok addled and unable to truly make such a commitment. At least, it's much harder to find lovely people than 10 years ago. (Central Europe) In Latin America, I've met 2-3 people ever who would fit - all taken already or such.
The first point can often perhaps go too far, where it turns into anti-familiness etc.
veqq
1yr ago
I know 3 guys who studied theater and acted professionally before becoming right wing political consultants.
veqq
1yr ago
designed to use asbestos for fire protection. Asbestos was banned right after construction started
Asbestos was used! Near 2000, they were supposed to start removing it. Some of the conspiracy theories focus on the owner destroying it for insurance money to avoid paying for the modifications, with the port authority buying it and paying or... Something. I don't remember. But removing asbestos plays a roll!
veqq
1yr ago
rating systems out of 5 stars and anything other than 5/5 threatens the driver's longevity on the platform. I think at one point, ~4.7 was the cutoff
I considered that academic scoring could potentially play a big role. In the French system, getting a 20 is extremely rare. It'd be like a 14 year old wrote publishable research. A score of 13 or so is considered fantastic. An Iranian friend applying for US PhDs had an issue where enrollment offices just turned her score into a percentage, giving her a 2.something GPA yet a 170 GRE score. Eventually we got it sorted. The UK has a similar thing too, if I remember correctly. Finland doesn't have such a range however. Germany also only uses 1-5 and expects near perfection.
veqq
1yr ago
No one knows what it was programmed to do exactly but here's a good example scenario:
The missile should fly 400km Westward, but a sensor malfunctioned and miscounted its distance. Once that sensor thought it had been 400km, it turned on the visual targeting system. Normally, this would look for a building of a certain shape - but in the middle of a field, it found no buildings. It went to secondary targets, tanks and so on. It found a tractor and went for it.
veqq
1yr ago
quokka
complains of "akrasia" -- an inability to accomplish things, or he struggles with his own failure to live up to his standards of logic. But his problems are grounded, not in his mind, but in his body
Becoming physically strong is the cure for basically every mental illness in men, such as depression or philosophy.
Hit the gym!
veqq
9hr ago
- He only visits non-tourist locations, strides the peasant countryside like a colossus, shows up uninvited and unannounced where the locals have likely never seen a tourist, and is instantly treated with respect by the men and admiration by the women.
From his videos, these are quite run of the mill places, really. Vietnam e.g. is full of Western tourists and these people speak more English than the average person.
It's more like 10,000 years. The 5 year thing is how much is currently mined and stockpiled in warehouses. You might as well say civilization can't continue because we only have so many months of oil and coal already extracted, in warehouses. This article is hilariously bad. Furthermore, current technology would allow us to get significantly more energy from uranium, however poor regulations (to fight nuclear proliferation) prevent us from doing that. Check out breeder reactors. Beyond that, we can use a lot more than just uranium.
But that's even what the article says next:
To your next point, yes, (traditional) peak oil was true and we have resorted to non-traditional methods to continue extracting it, which require huge energy commitments. Notably, frack wells quickly lose most of their production - instead of a decades long curve, they're barely producing after 2-3 years.
Beyond this, we do have other forms of energy production. Solar and wind are effective. As currently implemented, we have a lot of problems (re: the grid, stupid placement etc.) but they're both eroi positive - especially if you put solar panels in the desert (eroi of 20, unbuffered) instead of on people's rooves to make them feel good. Nuclear has an eroi above 70, generally speaking, over 2x coal's.
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